Students attend a class at Bayside-Martin Luther King Jr. school in Marin City, which receives $4 million in annual funding but is spending $4.5 million on such expenses as payroll, human resources, purchasing, special education services and maintenance. less

Students attend a class at Bayside-Martin Luther King Jr. school in Marin City, which receives $4 million in annual funding but is spending $4.5 million on such expenses as payroll, human resources, purchasing, ... more

Despite the state's economic recovery, a Marin County school district is struggling to make ends meet and is planning to cut teachers, administrators and special programs in the coming months.

While unusual, that wouldn't normally be noteworthy save for one not-so-minor detail: The Sausalito Marin City School District, thanks to a property tax loophole, has almost $30,000 a year to spend on each of the 150 students at its single school.

That's triple or quadruple the amount spent by most public schools and several thousand more than elite private schools. It's also just shy of the cost for a year of college at UC Berkeley, including room and board.

And it's still not enough to pay the bills - or lure the area's middle- and upper-class families to send their kids there.

How then does a metropolitan school district with huge piles of cash, along with money woes, mediocre test scores and one under-enrolled school continue to exist?

Many small districts have historically operated out of necessity, isolated by mountains or large swaths of agricultural land.

But Sausalito Marin City isn't located in the boondocks. It's spitting distance from San Francisco and close to Mill Valley, Corte Madera and Larkspur.

Wouldn't it make sense to merge with one of them to benefit from economies of scale?

Like many small urban school districts, including Piedmont, Hillsborough or some of the 19 one-school districts in San Jose, Sausalito Marin City doesn't want to join forces with neighbors.

"Our families have been here since the shipbuilders," said Susan Cassidy, a veteran fifth-grade teacher in the district. "This is a very strong community with a strong community identity."

Few small districts want to lose their local control, Kirst said.

State efforts in the 1960s and '70s offered financial incentives for districts to merge, but that ended long ago, he said.

"There is no incentive," Kirst said. "What it shows is you have to bribe them with significant amounts of money."

Major expenses

The Sausalito Marin City district has an enviable amount of money. Most school districts have maybe $8,000 or so to spend on each student. Sausalito Marin City has more money because it is what's called a basic aid district, or one that gets more in local property taxes to fund schools than it would if it took the typical amount in state funding for each student.

Yet small districts often spend a disproportionate amount on administration to perform all the required tasks - payroll, human resources, purchasing, special education services, maintenance - the list goes on.

Sausalito Marin City has a five-member school board, a superintendent, a principal and an assistant principal.

The superintendent, Steve Van Zant, is new this year. He has a part-time contract, earning $165,000 annually plus benefits to work three days a week. The pay rate would play out to $275,000 full time, about what the superintendent makes in San Francisco and much larger school districts across the state.

Until last year, the district had two schools, Bayside Elementary and Martin Luther King Jr. Middle. With enrollment less than half the size of a typical elementary school, the district combined the schools - along with the names - at the middle school site.

Still, this year the district is spending about $4.5 million and bringing in $4 million, digging into reserves to cover the extra costs.

To reel in spending, Van Zant is recommending cutting two teachers and one administrator as well as reducing counseling, art and Spanish programs.

Evidence of riches

The school has a new wing of classrooms built over the summer as well as state-of-the-art playgrounds with artificial turf. Most classes have about 13 students, and on a recent day several had a teacher and an aide to help with lessons. Average class size is closer to 25 or 30 in most other state public schools.

There are iPads for all students as well as a handful of computers in each classroom.

The school is gleaming, well stocked and quiet.

All teachers get a class period for preparation, a rare benefit for elementary-level teachers. The school has a full-time physical education teacher, a full-time art teacher, a part-time Spanish teacher and two full-time counselors.

"It's like a bigger school," he said. "I like this because it's one big school."

Yet the gleaming classrooms and the enticing $30,000 or so spent on each student hasn't lured the middle- and upper-class parents to send their children there.

Low-income households

Most of the students at the district's K-8 school come from the less affluent Marin City and are predominantly African American. They are nearly all from low-income homes.

The district's money, however, comes primarily from Sausalito, where the average single-family home costs upward of $1.8 million.

Private school is a common choice for wealthier families in the area, although in recent years, a public charter school, the Willow Creek Academy, has lured some local families back to public school, district officials said.

The charter opened in 2001 under the authorization of the Sausalito Marin City school board. Complicating the district's budget situation, the charter is entitled to a share of the district's funding. Willow Creek gets about $1.7 million, or what it would otherwise get in state funding, equal to $6,000 for each of the 289 students.

Without the charter school, the district would have almost $6 million to spend on its 150 students at Bayside Martin Luther King Jr., or $40,000 each.

Few basic aid districts have charter schools because they don't get extra state money to fund them. They have to share their surplus property tax revenue, Van Zant said.

Charter school growing

Yet even with far less funding, the charter school, located at the district's former Bayview Elementary site in Sausalito, has double the enrollment and more buy-in from white and wealthier families.

"The charter has drawn a lot of kids who traditionally would have gone to private school," Van Zant said. "As the charter school grows we need to allocate more money to the charter school because they're entitled to it."

Still, the community is clinging to its one district school. There is no real movement to combine resources with another district.

Such a move could mean losing basic aid status and the big pile of property tax cash that comes with it.

At this point, a merger doesn't make sense to the community, Van Zant said.

"The fear is if you lose the school, if you lose the post office, you're not a town anymore," he said. "They like to feel they have local control.

"It's their money, so they get to determine how they spend it."

$30,000

Approximate amount Sausalito Marin City district spends per student per year.

$8,000

Approximate average amount California districts spend on each student per year.